Got to ask what is different about today's wood from trees vs trees of the past? Have you ever driven a nail into old 2x4's or those wood slats in the wall of old houses,they are super hard compared to now.Hell today's 2x4's and the rest split on you when hammering a nail or driving a wood screw.
Quick grown, from junk wood species and rapid rotation hybrids, mass production cut without regard to grain, etc., and cured or dried carelessly.
Those trees were always around, and that kind of
slipshod less costly lumber production, but the wood so produced was not used for load bearing construction - thread bobbins, toys, shims, toothpicks, a lot of the stuff we use plastic for now.
I once did some work in the unfinished basement of a large house in the Kenwood area of Minneapolis, and noticed the basement joists - the floor supports under the house and spanning the major first floor rooms, visible in the unfinished basement ceiling - were six by somethings (14? looked bigger than 12) of black cherry heartwood. They owner said he knew - they were cut from the trees cleared from the lot, when the house was built, sawn and dried on site as the foundation was prepared. They were just handy and serviceable, apparently.
I once helped a guy with a remodel of his chicken coop in Isanti, MN, which involved a new roof. The old roof underlayment was one by twelve pine boards more than twenty feet long - ran the full length of a fairly long coop, straight and close fit. Very few knots.
That's what ordinary woods was made of, around there at the time.
